


Yours, truly

by Gomjabar



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Introspection, Temporarily Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29703267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gomjabar/pseuds/Gomjabar
Summary: “I always thought Fatin ran a little deeper than her whole princess shtick.” Said Dot looking straight at Leah and the first thing that came to her mind was ‘don’t I know it’.
Relationships: Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke
Comments: 8
Kudos: 99





	Yours, truly

**Author's Note:**

> Good whatever time is it for you fellow reader,  
> it's actually my first fic and sadly not in my first language so I hope your eyes won't bleed if you chose to read it, however long I tried to track errors.
> 
> I based this work on something I read on Tumblr about the idea of Leah falling in love with Fatin previous to the island.
> 
> Well, hope you enjoy at least !

“I always thought Fatin ran a little deeper than her whole princess shtick.” Said Dot looking straight at Leah and the first thing that came to her mind was ‘don’t I know it’.

Leah Rilke had always been a peculiar child and not in the ‘I’m different from other girl’ trope she would read so much in books later. No, Leah was particular in that when she found something interesting or slightly out of place, her brain would latch on to it until it became an obsession that would only stop when she resolved the problem.

It first revealed itself when she was five and started wanting to learn to read because books had caught her attention, the first big problem her brain would try to resolve as thoroughly as possible but certainly not the last. 

Of course, it made her uniquely suited for the american school system and everyone just thought that she was academically gifted, reinforced by the fact that she was a wreck socially speaking. Even her parents, sweet but a bit too simple to understand the way their daughter’s brain worked, simply put her in a private academy for ‘special kids’.

The funny thing is, she could have been a mediocre student, already absorbed by every book she could put her hands on and certainly not paying attention to the math lesson. But Victoria freaking Martin, a classmate of hers, had said that she didn’t belong here, in that offhanded way the children have to make an observation. And her brain had just fixed on that, the idea that she was in this school by a stroke of luck and she had started getting obsessed by topping Victoria in everything just to prove the girl wrong.

It had been her brain's second big problem to solve and one who had gone on until the end of primary school when the Martins moved away for work. Leah had been top of the school every year during the five years.  
Her frenzy to be first had simply vanished after that and, while she remained one of the top students up until the whole Galanis affair, she never put as much work into it afterward.

But neither of those two things was what made her realise her brain was truly fucked up, no, that honor was reserved to the one and only problem her brain hadn’t been able to put to rest even now, years after and stranded on a freaking island.

Leah Rilke met Fatin Jadmani at the school recital when she was six years old and her brain had latched onto her more vigorously than anything else before, or after for all it mattered.

The girl had been full of pretend dignity that made the adult laugh but fooled the children who only knew the girl as their popular playmate and she had been smaller than the enormous instrument that Leah learned that night was a cello. She wasn’t particularly good then, certainly better than any other kid that age or even a bit older but not yet the acclaimed player she would later be.

Leah hadn’t been transfixed by the finesse of her technique, that would be reserved for the fourth grade solo, or the beauty of the music, that too would come later in the dark pit of an opera full of pretentious strangers. What her six years old brain hooked on to was the passion the other girl exhibited while playing, the love, reflecting in the smile that had disrupted her attempt at seriousness and the way she had grinned when everyone applauded.

It was simply something she couldn’t understand, the way Fatin obviously struggled and yet still kept on going, kept on trying to produce the notes required for the piece of music. 

Passion wasn’t something Leah understood. She liked reading for sure, until the dead of the night, hiding under her cover if she had to, but reading only gave. It was not a sport where you would painfully ache everywhere just to be better and it wasn’t an art form where you had to put hours of frustrating effort just to produce something. Reading was easy, it only gave and gave and gave, offering new sights, new perspective, new worlds, new everything. A never ending source of entertainment with zero effort on her part, thousand of little problems with solutions neatly written at the end, so alluring to her one-track mind.

But Fatin was all passion and hard-work unlike every other kid in the school and since Leah’s world was reduced to that and her home, where loving but decidedly not passionate people lived, the girl detonated in her mind. Like a scarlet book in the middle of thousands of white one, the urge to pick it up was impossible to resist and that’s what her brain did, sealing a life-long obsession for the other girl.

So, that’s when Leah Rilke, six years old and a book slipping from her grasp, forgotten in the face of such a sigh, first glanced at the deceptively complex human that was Fatin Jadmani.

The manic energy first directed itself at the cello : it was the only thing Leah knew of Fatin at that age for the two weren’t in the same class and didn’t run in the same circle, even back then. For months Leah had harassed her parents for cello discs and enregistrements of any kinds, so much so that they had offered her to learn it but Leah had given up at the end of the year.

This foray into the instruments had only given her a healthy love of Yo-Yo Ma and an even deeper interest for Fatin. Playing the cello was hard and not at all rewarding and yet, everytime she had the occasion to see her play it, the girl seemed as passionate as the last time.

It would take actual years, innumerable concerts and countless hours of lying in her bed listening to cello vinyl for her to be able to dissociate her obsession with Fatin with the fact that she played cello.

She was thirteen, sitting at her dad’s side in the pit of the opera as usual, an habitude born of the years she spent begging them to let her go see any and every cello concert there was. Fatin had come on stage for her biggest solo yet, the first in such a place and with such a public and she had been dressed for the occasion, a simple red dress modest enough for a child transitioning to her teenhood. Leah hadn’t heard a single note for the first ten minutes, the blood rushing to her cheeks and resonating loudly in her ears.

That’s when it really cliqued for her, that Fatin was really the object of her mania, more than the incomprehensible passion in which she played the instrument.

After that, well, it was a free way for her brain to a lot of other detail to focus (obsess) on. Her way of moving, talking, her habits and idiosyncrasies, her social status and capabilities, her body.

Eighth grade as it turns out, would be a particularly painful year for about everyone. Hormones and discovery were made and awkward experiments under the bleacher and in the lockers were partaken in. Even Ian had told her his fair share of painfully funny stories of bad breath and clacking teeth. Her isolation from such things only put her deeper in the nerdy unpopular groups but since it also let her be at peace to process she didn’t complain too much. Only the thickest of boys tried to approach her but it didn’t pan out for them, her brain too obtuse to such things when Fatin had suddenly taken a much more important place than before. Her growing awareness of what really had preocupate her for eight year now even leading her astray from reading to the much more dangerous road of writing.  
With a first glimpse at what could motivate one to work hard for something only for the thing in itself, she dabbled in everything. From short stories to the painfully cringey and never talked about poetry phase about, well, a lot of different things but notably the various feelings she held towards one particular girl. Even if a few other of her schoolmates, girls or boys, had a couple of lines dedicated to them.

Entering high school was definitely a big step but for Leah, it mostly meant that her allowance money and Saturday night were kept for cello recital. Fifteen year old her felt particularly awkward and long limbed, in the middle of a growth spurt that left her in an uncomfortable in-between with many bruised elbows. Fatin, of course, seemed to be free of such teenage consideration and was already the life of every party she could get into, her lean and tan body hypnotizing every boy to her advantage.

Surprisingly, it was also the return of Victoria Martin and a renewed rivalry that led to a few make out sessions in empty classrooms. Sharing her first times with her had been pretty good but it never could have evolved to a true relationship between them due to multiple factors. Well, the primary one being that Vic said yes when a boy asked her out but Leah wasn’t too sad about their parting, even if some of those class debates really could have been less ambiguous considering the boy was sitting a few feet away from them.

The rather familiar and comfortable infatuation she felt for Fatin from afar, her semi-platonic competition with Vic and her afternoon spent laughing with Ian would have gone on unperturbed until the end of high school if it wasn’t for the start of senior year. Until The Nature Of Her lended into her lap like a gravel that sent tumbling down every cog in her system. 

Objectively, it wasn’t a good book, Leah had read too many books to not know that and she was the top student in her literature class at one of the top schools in the state anyway, she knew what constituted a good book. This wasn’t one in any way, shape or form : the plot was non-existent, the characters rather two-dimensional and every joke the author tried to make fell flat. But, without fail, her brain latched onto a small detail, something made it react like nothing had in long years (excluding of course, seeing Fatin again at the start of the year, all tanned and her body definitely set into womanhood, the traits of her face making Leah wished she had painstakingly took the time to learn how to draw).

The author was someone named Jeffrey Galanis, a mediocre alumnus but still someone who graduated from her school and a 37 year old male to boot. So what, exactly, had pushed him to write a book about a teenage woman in public school ? The thought picked at her brain until she couldn’t think about anything else, reading and re-reading the book in her search for comprehension. 

She wasn’t six anymore, she understood passion but the writing of the book obviously lacked it and since nothing tied the author to any of the characters, she didn’t understand what could possibly have made him write three hundred pages. From the first time in her life, a book didn’t resolve the problem it posed to her. She felt betrayed and terribly eager for an answer of any kind, her brain plunging feet deep into one of it’s more dangerous spirals to date. 

And then the reading had come and with it, an opportunity for her brain to be at peace. Fool she had been, for those few months had been nothing but a terrible descent into the pit of her curiosity, a true revelation to the extent of which her obsession-prone brain was prepared to go for the sake of understanding something. Even Fatin faded away during this period, the problem of her so familiar it could be left unattended for a few blissful moments of respite in her overthinking. 

Jeffrey Galanis only spent two and half months in her life and yet her brain twisted itself around him like he would have all the proverbial answers to give her everytime one of those obsessions of her would come up. 

It was the first time anyone who cared about her, namely Ian and her parents, saw how such spirals would leave her if not resolved. In a way, it was her first time too, of seeing herself cascading so low. Even her decade long obsession with Fatin left her more exhilarated than whatever stump she had found herself in.

Maybe that’s where the difference between the two lied, Jeffrey had been a whirlwind, a rush of adulthood and forbidden that shocked her to the core painfully.

Fatin had been slow, starting in the innocence of childhood that hadn’t fully understood the scope of what she had felt toward the other girl and had slowly developed as layer after layer of the other girl had revealed themselves to her eyes. Fatin had always been there, in the periphery and the epicentre of her life, there wasn’t much in terms of memory before her and afterwards everyone of them was faintly tainted with her presence in her life and mind.

Like her bedroom with only one photograph, of Fatin of course, from a school art project which was the only time the two girls ever interacted even if it was for a handful of sentences. The frame would seem unassuming in it’s smallness, a detail and yet the fact that it was the only one in the room immediately would put him at great interest. A metaphor of the place the girl had in her mind, something only her fourteen year old emo poet self could have come up with and yet something she never had the heart to change (Fatin was quite beautiful in that picture).

Yet, it was Jeffrey who made her parent sent her to this stupid retreat, like he had broken something deep inside her that needed repairing. How high was the irony that Fatin would be here with her ? Like returning somewhere you haven’t been in a long time, looking at her profile from her seat had felt restful to her mind compared to the incessant cacophony of thoughts that had haunted her for the last months.

Then the plane crash and whatever progress she had made since he left her life went down the drain, every bizarre thing on this freaking island sending her further into the maelstrom that her mind had become.

-Breakline-

“So, shape and texture, uh ?” Fatin asked Leah, troubling the other girl in what was apparently a deep introspection in front of the fire.

She startled and Fatin would feel more bad if she didn’t know not to let Leah the time to develop one of her theories. Too much thinking wasn’t good for anybody’s sanity here, but none of them had exploded like the girl had so she considered her to be the one to look out for the most.

“Earlier, you seem like you knew what Shalifoe was talking about. You never told me that.”

Leah sent her one of those dry stares. “You didn’t knew I existed two weeks ago Fatin, no offense but I’m not gonna share my whole sex life just because you’re bored.”

She snorted. “Harsh girl, I mean, we’ve been in the same school for years. Plus, I fought we bonded, what with the whole forgiving each other and whatnot.”

Leah didn’t comment or react, she just stared at her, like she was searching for something or like she was on the verge of saying something but was measuring if it was worth it.

Fatin knew those kinds of looks, after years of trying to see through people to find their real intentions, she had become quite good at deciphering them. She just didn’t know what could possibly be the reason behind this one.

Of course Fatin had known of Leah way before the island, as removed as the girl was from her own social circle, you just didn’t forget the person who've been top of the school in your super elite ones for practically the whole eleven years of their shared education. 

Fatin knew she was a bit self-absorbed, only interested in people that could get her what she wanted, the few friends she had painstakingly cultivated over the years and practising the cello as a form of exchange chip with her mother. She wasn’t ashamed of that fact and neither of the fact that Leah had never been more than a passing thought whenever she crossed her in the hallways. 

If it wasn’t for the island, Leah Rilke wouldn’t have been much more in her life than a passing memory of a valedictorian speech and a girl always lost in her books. But a lot of fucked up things happened and put here here, on this beach, joking and actually getting along with the other teen like they had been friends for years. Guess trauma really bonded people faster than getting drunk at party to fuck the hottest guy as some weird competition.

She had hit it off with Dot from practically the first days but ever since she went and found water Leah had been growing on her. It felt like holding on to a tether to her ancient life, without the garbage of her parents tainting it, speaking with Leah felt good in a way Dot and the others who were definitely tied with the island in her mind did not. Plus, the girl was surprisingly witty, with a deadpan and dry sort of humour that just did it for Fatin.

Spending time with her was surprisingly good for her sanity, as oxymoronic as it sounded (she even used words like oxymoronic now) considering the girl was living her life at the edge of a mental breakdown. That was also one of the interesting things about Leah, while she definitely didn’t condone the manic energy she would spend thinking about it, the girl was probably onto something. Like, the girl was obviously smart but Fatin didn't even need that to see that something fishy was going on. She could live without the constant accusation to everybody and the attempt at drowning though, she had ended up caring about the girl, it would be sad to lose her to something like that.

Caring about Leah had been a gateway road to feelings about the girl that wouldn’t have been welcome in normal time and definitely weren’t when in such a crisis. Fatin didn't do relationships for a reason, she wanted to be free of any constraints that weren’t worth it and high school couples just screamed drama and short term reward, not worth the effort it would take to be in one. She didn’t do crushes either, only people she was interested enough to sleep with for a night which were always guys because while she was self aware enough, homophobia just wasn’t something she was interested in receiving. 

Admiring a girl’s beauty from afar was fine and dandy until you found yourself stuck on an island with seven other girls, one of whom she was painfully attracted to, even when she was covered in sand and dirt from head to toe. Honestly that had been one of the biggest indicators of how far she was gone, how Leah’s smile made her look so lovely even under all the grim.

She wasn’t in love with Leah of course, but she knew she had gone soft on the girl and indulged her more often than not. She definitely crossed a line when she started humming one of her cello pieces to calm the girl who was laying in her lap, looking at the sea with lost eyes. She drummed her finger along, playing the rhythm she had learned extensively by rote.

She was stopped by Leah humming drowsily, a soft satisfied smile on her face. “Francoeur, cello sonata. Weird choice if you were trying to get me to sleep.”

Fatin slowly turned to Leah, surprise inordinately apparent on her face. “How the hell did you recognise that ?”

Leah hummed softly. “I listened to a lot of cello growing up, one could say I was slightly obsessed with it.” She said, a small secretive smile on her face, like an inside joke only she could understand was being told.

Fatin suddenly felt every nerve ending of her body, little electric courants running up her spine from every point of contacts with Leah. She felt betrayed by her body reactions but she couldn’t deny that it felt pleasant after the horrible past weeks.

Afterward it became kind of a game between them, Fatin would hummed or drumm a rhythm and Leah would be tasked with recognising it. She did it with surprising accuracy, showing that she had not lied when she talked about her younger self listening to cello for hours on end. She had to admit she was impressed with the girl’s knowledge, she delved far past the most known pieces even if she had a clear preference for the classics, contrary to her who prefered to play modern music on the instruments.

The game had come to an abrupt stop with the excitations of their last days on the island. Between Rachel barely surviving the blood loss after the shark attack, Nora disappearing, Leah going into mutism and actually being rescued, well, a lot of things didn’t follow them from the island.

The bunker may have been truly more fucked up that the island and considering how close they all came to dying on that stupid piece of dirt, it was saying something. It also taught them to listen to Leah when she was telling you that something wrong was going on. The first few days had been fine and incredible, apart from the separation anxiety but she preferred not to dwell too much on the fact that she had become some sort of codependent bitch. Sleeping in a bed, taking a shower, putting on actual clean clothes, drinking fresh water and eating to her stomach content was very great until it wasn’t. Until a few too many days had passed without them seeing each other or receiving any news from her family.

That’s when she started being suspicious of the empty hallway and the too sympathetic FBI looking guy. The cams in her room were also a bit too much and she let Leah’s numerous obsessive spiral come back to the forefront of her memory, trying to crack the enigma the girl hadn’t been able to in her depleted state.

She hadn’t had to in the end. Of course, Leah had come barging in her room with Toni in her tow and she had to admit she was a little bit too happy to see them both. What happened next was worthy of any hollywood movie, what with them busting out every other girl and trying to find a way to escape. It had taken some more days of a game of cat and mouse to bust out and even then they had had to cross a jungle for three days before they found a village (typical, had said Rachel in a gruff but slightly amused voice).

Waiting to be retrieved had also been a few tense days followed by being brutally separated again, which Fatin wasn’t pleased with at all even if it means accepting the codependency they all developed on the island. Even if it made her therapist truly happy, it still didn’t help her to make contact with one of the girls. Most of them lived truly too far away to hope to see them before a long time but Leah freaking Rilke lived in the same town and yet she had no means of contacting the other girl. 

Their telephonic lines had all been revoked during their time on the island so they had no way of getting each other's number and in the frenzy of their truly harrowing day in the peruvian jungle, she had forgotten to ask Leah for her address. So here she was, strolling around on a Tuesday, trying to reacquaint herself with the bustling life of a city, even if it was one as small as Berkeley.

Seeing people going about their life, talking on the phone or enjoying an ice-cream had gotten less weirder in the past few days but it still jarred her sometimes, like her life had gotten back that air of possibilities. The first time she passed a food store and realised she could literally enter it and buy months worth of food had hit her particularly hard and she had spent forty minutes outside like a lunatic.

She hasn’t made a trip to the beach yet but doing the same tour of her childhood town which she already knew like the back of her hands before was rapidly making her crazy so she had settled for people watching in front of the opera where she used to play when she was a bit younger. 

She started humming after a few minutes, one of her numerous cello pieces coming to mind in front of the place.

“Summer, extract of The Four Seasons, Vivaldi.”

She nearly got whiplash at the speed she turned around at the sound of that particular voice. Leah fucking Rilke.

She was dressed in a simple linen shirt and shorts, her hair held back with a pair of sunglasses and Fatin practically melted when she spotted the trace of solar cream on her nose and cheekbones. She was fucking beautiful, that’s what she was and Fatin was rooted to her spot, her mind blanking comfortably after the last week of stress and yearning.

And then, Leah’s smirk melted into the softest smile and Fatin was loath to resist the pull, falling onto her arms like she did when they saw that plane flying over their head. Leah was warm, she smelled clean and she felt so, so real compared to everything else around them.

“I played this when I was thirteen you know ? In this very opera, you should be aware that you’re hugging a star.” The tone was meant to be sarcastic but the way she squeezed Leah harder surely undermined every effect she had tried to interject in her sentence. 

The taller girl only chuckled, before slightly letting go of her and bending down, apparently in the middle of laughing and wheezing, clutching at her shoulder like she would keel over if Fatin dropped her. She didn’t know what was so funny but seeing Leah this happy, this free in expressing her joy was warming Fatin all over, which was damning because she thought she had let her infatuation back on the island. 

Leah finally stopped, standing straight again and looking at her with the most peculiar gaze, something soft and heavy. “October 14, you wore a beautiful red dress. It was your first solo representation outside of school. I never had the chance to tell you this but you were incredible that night.”

Fatin’s mouth drops. “What. The. Actual. Fuck.”  
Leah laughs again, small giggles escaping her lips but her brain’s still stuck onto the fact that Leah apparently was there for her first public solo performance and even remembered the exact date. Seriously, what the actual fuck ?

“You’re pulling one one me Leah, what were you doing there ?” She asks, her thoughts all over the place.

Leah takes a big breath, her eyes going all around her face before apparently setting on her own. She nods slightly, probably more to herself than to Fatin.

“Remember I told you I was a big fan of the cello growing up ? When I was six, I went to the school recital and there was this girl that played a piece on it. I remember the instrument was practically bigger than her and she made a few mistakes then and there when playing but she also had the biggest smile on her face…”

“Wait, school recital ? I was the only one playing cello at school, who…” Fatin sucks in a breath, her voice trailing off into nothing.

Leah smiles again. “Fell in love with you that day.” 

She says in the softest of voice and Fatin’s mind becomes full of statics, her hands latching onto the arms Leah had around her shoulders to stop her from sitting down in the middle of the street.

It’s shocking, this revelation. Truly shocking in it’s unexpectedness and the ramification of it’s meanings. Leah saying that she fell in love with her when they were six years old brat, it’s… Well, Fatin feels terrible for her first, she had after all only known Leah as the valedictorian girl, a freaking nerd with which she shared schools with. 

She can’t really wrap her brain around the idea that Leah, a girl with which her own history only begins three months ago in a plane crash has had an entire timeline with Fatin. Again, what the actual fuck ? 

She looks up to Leah’s face, seeing a peaceful and smiling face. She realizes that Leah’s not expecting anything from her, she’s waiting for a response probably but not particularly to her feelings. The whole thing is so old news for her, like a fact of her life, something she learned to live with way before Fatin even knew who she was. She feels somewhat humbled by all the years Leah has on her, sure, she developed a crush pretty fast when getting to know the other girl but to actually love someone for that many years without any reciprocities ? Well, it’s doing something for her, that’s for sure.

“Did I render Fatin Jadmani speechless ? What an accomplishment, getting valedictorian after that is gonna be so easy.” Leah says in a half-laugh.

She’s neither nervous nor pressing, she’s acting as she always had since the island and it settles something in her. She let a small smile grace her features and one of her hands goes up to lightly thread along Leah’s jaw, setting in a hold behind her ears.

“You are such a cocky little shit, Leah Rilke. Don’t let that headstart’s going to your head, I’m gonna catch up one day and you better be fucking ready for that.”

She has the galls to laugh at that and Fatin just can’t let that go so her other hand comes up to frame Leah’s face and draw her into a kiss.

It’s full of smile, a truly impractical thing for a proper kiss, and Fatin wished Leah’s arms where somewhere less chaste than her elbows but she also knows that she’s gonna have a lot of times to do way more than that so she allows such a messy thing to count as their first ones.

She figures that Leah’s way past the point of needing to be seduced by the whole princess thing anyway.


End file.
